The Friendship Group as a Protective Environment for Political Deviants

This is a study of the relationship between partisan preference and social integration in natural work groups in several automobile plants. The basic finding is that the number of work group friends increases from the Democratic to the Republican end of a standard party identification scale. Since the political context of the study sample is heavily Democratic, attention is focused on the fact that Republicans in this environment are political deviants. It is suggested that friendship integration is a function of perceived deviance in that deviating from group norms leads to social insecurity, cognitive dissonance, and a need for opinion evaluation, all of which motivate affiliative behavior. Several hypotheses are deduced from this proposition. The first is that Republicans have less political contact in nonwork contexts, but more in the work group, than Democrats do. Second, the relationship between partisanship and friendship integration should be greater for members of social groups in which the pro-Democratic norm is stronger than for those in which this norm is weaker. Third, strength of identification with the norm-bearing group ought to be positively related to friendship integration among deviants, since identification would make the group's norms more salient and increase the deviant's discomfort. Fourth, political deviants should tend to choose each other as friends to a greater extent than political conformers do. Finally, since friendship alliances apparently serve a protective function for political deviants, it is hypothesized that among deviants (but not among conformers), friendship integration should be related to political participation. All the hypotheses are supported. The results are interpreted in terms of the critical function of social support for political deviants in pluralist societies. Since pressures for conformity are strong, it is important to understand the ways in which minorities deal with them. Friendships in work groups, ostensibly nonpolitical, therefore have important political functions.